The deputy leader of Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah on Tuesday night warned that his movement would deliver a “surprise” response in the coming days to a series of alleged Israeli raids.
Tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have skyrocketed since Saturday night, when two of the group’s members were killed in an Israeli strike in Syria, and drones crashed in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, in an incident also blamed on Israel. On Monday, Lebanon claimed Israeli drones attacked a Palestinian base in the country’s east.
Israel took credit for the Syria raid, but has not commented on the other strikes. The model of drone used in the Beirut attack has raised considerable questions about their provenance, with analysts suggesting they could be Iranian.
The target of the drone attack in Beirut was an expensive and rare industrial mixing machine used in the creation of solid fuel, and the raid set back the terror group’s plans to develop long-range precision missiles by at least a year, according to Hebrew media reports late Tuesday.
After Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday threatened retaliatory strikes against Israel, his deputy added a warning of his own late on Tuesday.
“We want the strike to be a surprise… and so there is no interest in diving into the details. The coming days will reveal this,” Naim Qassem said in an interview with Russian channel RT Arabic, according to a Reuters translation.
Qassem said Hezbollah viewed the Beirut attack as one it is compelled to respond to, since failing to do so would let Israel set its own terms and change the status quo that has reigned since the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
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